They’ve been around since the late 1980s, but that’s the beauty of them. Plus, it’s easy to make the clip “loop” so the viewer can watch until they understand the concept or problem.Īre animated GIFs cutting edge? Nope.

There’s an “expense” to using video - in terms of page loading speed - and while most of the time it’s worth it, for very short clips that don’t require sound animated GIFs are the way to go.

Video requires the overhead of a video player app (of some sort) that may not run on all browsers and platforms. Video has no rival when it comes to explaining something complex, but sometimes it’s overkill. I’m the first one to jump on YouTube when I don’t understand something. I learned a long time ago that not all “upgrades” are improvements!īut… on the Snagit feature list was something I’d been anticipating for awhile: the ability to quickly make short animated GIFs. I’m still using a couple of Windows programs from the late 1990s and they still work fine. If it’s working for me, I usually stick with what I’ve got until it either stops working or I see features that I really want to have. I’m not really an “early adopter,” especially when it comes to upgrading software to the latest version. So, along comes the newest version of Snagit (13 for PC, 4 for Mac) a few weeks ago. In fact, you won’t really have any idea how often you’ll use it until you get going with it. That’s just what Snagit does – and it does it very, very well. If you’re a blogger, you can grab a screen shot, edit it, add arrows or text, and post it to your blog without firing up Photoshop or importing it into Canva or PicMonkey. With Snagit, you can take a screenshot or a short screen video, mark it up with notes and explanatory graphics, and paste it into an e-mail or instant message. Sometimes it’s much quicker (and easier!) to send a picture than words. If you’re unfamiliar with the major benefits of Snagit, let me catch you up quickly.

Snagit 13 gif